


Meta on Ben's Commentary About Places Steve Takes People

by wanderlustlover



Series: Hawaii Five-0 Season Three Meta [3]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Meta, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 10:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/747589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very long meta commentary about who Steve takes to important places in his past, and why. Inspired by a list of the places Steve has taken Cath in Season Three, and where all he's taken Danny in three seasons. </p><p>[Circa 3.19.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meta on Ben's Commentary About Places Steve Takes People

**Author's Note:**

> [scottishheroine](http://scottishheroine.tumblr.com/post/46339864104/bens-living-room-some-special-places-for-steve) :
>
>> [ben-chan](http://ben-chan.tumblr.com/post/46331974107/some-special-places-for-steve) :
>> 
>> Some special places for Steve
>> 
>> I love the difference in Steve’s choices for a special place when it comes to Danny and Cath.
>> 
>> Danny:
>> 
>>   1. Hiking to the most beautiful place on the island (he went there with his father)
>>   2. Going for a ride with the car he worked on for 6 month (his father’s car)
>>   3. Going deep sea fishing, so that Danny can catch his first Tuna
>> 

>> 
>> (and others I forgot about right now?)
>> 
>> Cath:
>> 
>>   1. Kamekona’s place
>>   2. The car with food in a paper box 
>>   3. He “followed” her on the boat for his trill just to end up on a different one(xD no I wasn’t laughing my ass off)
>> 

>> 
>> (or did I forget anything?)
> 
> I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about how Steve shows affection, and no time to go into them right now.  Later, hopefully, unless Amanda gets to it first. (LIKE ALWAYS ;P)

I think that Laura leaves these comments here like catnip so she can bait my inner editor, research, gamer, fangirl, who seriously spends all this time thinking about these things anyway. But I, seriously, stared at this for the longest time the first time I saw it, because you can’t look at these lists and just go “LOL one is more important than the other” in the McRoll vs. McDanno world. Or, well, I guess you can. I don’t want to step on any toes. **I can’t.**

I look at these two lists and things drastically explode in my head **about Steve** , not about Catherine or Danny specifically. 

So lets talk about those things today. 

First off, lets start with our main man there that you are comparing. Steve McGarrett is bar none the most emotionally and mentally compartmented person on this show. I’d argue, easily, that the ways he handles love, trust, loyalty, family, sex, work, affection are all in separate boxes and that different people are in different ones, and that no one is in the same ones as anyone else. 

The rarest and closest topic that runs Steve, but that Steve shares very selectively is the one of his family. More aptly, rarely, his father and almost **never**  about his mother. 

The only two people he shares his father with, in the present tense (present, now today, in his current life where John is murder/dead), are Mary and Joe. Both at the graveside almost exclusively. (I refuse to count Doris here, because the women GPS stalked her daughter to The Punchbowl and Steve was actively against the pressuring of Mary.)

The only two people who can share who his father was outside of himself, in the past (of his childhood/early adulthood), are Chin and Joe. Very specifically in being able to change Steve’s interpretation of John’s stoic, hands off, parenting actions toward him (with both the Chin telling him that his dad went to all his games before he left, and Joe pointing out his dad called every week while he was in SEALs training in Coronado).

These are, also, the **only** two people he goes to when he wants to get more inside his Dad’s head. Chin is the very first person to be willing asked/told about the call and The Champ box. Mary literally has to break into the box. He closes the box when Danny comes in a room, early on. The entire team never actually sees/has their hands on the contents until they need the massive computer to use Mary’s phone for pictures of all the articles. 

It is a tooth extractingly slow process to get Steve to give up anything of his past, or family (that isn’t specifically shined up happy memories like football or the “Five-O” story.)

 **1.**  Danny on the other hand is the **only** person to be on the end receiving of Steve sharing the good things from his childhood, that were only between himself and his father. **Ever in canon.**

Danny is the **only** one who gets to see Steve acquiring parts to work on the car (that Steve and his father were putting together over twenty years ago). Danny is the **only** one who is invited on both inaugural drives of the Marquis (in the show and the secondary deleted scene). Danny is the **only** one who is taken out the petroglyphs (where he and his dad went yearly). Danny is the **only** one even allowed to know the location of his father’s favorite fishing spot (and I feel it’s important to acknowledge Danny wants/asks for this trip/fishinp, and Steve gets to choose that it’ll be at a place of his choosing). 

In my personal opinion, a lot of this comes down to the fact Danny is the single person on the deck as Steve has to come to terms with his father & past as he experienced it, his father & the past as it was (where he couldn’t see it), and the ways those two different things are changing who he is at any given present moment (especially in the first two season).

 Danny and Steve **literally** meet over the bones of John McGarrett as a character (not a body, metaphorically speaking here). In his garage, after Steve has marched through his childhood house still splattered with his father’s blood and brain matter on the walls, looking for clues (Making his father’s death just “work”), has paused to uncover the Marquis (adressing his only “history” for the first time in scene) and is holding the Champ tool box in one hand (this place where both of those meet), against Danny defending his crime scene of the murder of John McGarrett. 

John McGarrett is every single where and when and what of how Danny and Steve meet, of their beginning foundation. John McGarret (past and present) is the first foundation of their partnership/relationship. 

Danny is on hand transitioning from requisitioned HPD cop to partner to friend to best friend nearly every working day since the moment Steve shows up in Hawaii. He’s there as Steve is learning about the completely, hands off, silent support his father showed him and his life, to his colleagues and mentors. He’s there on hand as Steve realizes he and his sister were not banished/abandoned but actually sent away, and ostracized from their father (the same way John ostracized himself from everyone in his life), for the protection of their very lives (and he’s there when Steve has to make the same choice about Mary, after her kidnapping that John made about him and Mary as kids). 

Danny is there, again, as the **only** person to listen to Steve make the wide ranting comment that he is, exactly, who he is today because of that car bomb that took his mother from him(/them). Danny’s the safest person to explore/share the good parts of his childhood with, as he’s shaking it free of assumptions of what he once new, and claiming what he can from a twenty plus year rubble pile. 

As he’s discovering new things about himself, he’s actually opening very selective doors (that **only he** controls, to open and close at his choosing, not Danny’s to touch or manipulate) to share with Danny things that he loved.

Steve spends season one and two having to reframe who he is, what his childhood was, what his father was going through, who his father was/is, how strong or weak he was. And you can not go through things without having to reassess who you are, what you were spared/justified to, what you never knew or noticed, whether you were loved/valued. (Though, I will admit that we see these things far faster expressed in words by Mary. Every. Time.)

I would, also, argue this happens all over again in Season Three with Doris, in the complete opposite/negative direction of reframing (which then includes everyone being abandoned, plus his father being screwed over as well as everyone else, under the best of intentions, without ever knowing, and dying/being executed never knowing). 

Because, once again? Danny is the **only** person Steve confides his mother is lying to him to. We never see him tell or imply this to anyone else.

——

 **2.**  It’s very hard for me to feel that it’s fair to compare Danny and Cath, because their situations are as different as night and day, from the get go. 

Cath is the person who shows up, with the head tip to having working in Naval Intelligence with him (see the Deleted Scene for Cath’s Second Episode in Season 1), which makes her the person Steve has known longest in the show who isn’t a teacher or teammate (i.e, Joe [and soon new BFF in Arms of Season Three]).

They have what I like to call **A Status Quo.** And they keep to it. Without Fail. 

We are told very early, in very plain terms what this status quo is — 

That Steve ( **specifically** ) calls Cath for favors (and **only** for favors, as Cath points out, herself, he’s **never** called for anything other than one), these favors are then paid back with the insinuation of dinner/a date (which has also **never** been gotten to), but ends up always being sex. **Once** a season Steve make what I’ve come to call **A Grand Gesture** , that happens in reaction to something else negative usually, and then everything goes back to the status quo.

We are never once shown someone regretting this or wishing for more. (The closest we ever come to this is Cath avoiding her phone in early Season 3 briefly, and being annoyed about a favor, but then we never see it again. The same as we never once see anything else from Steve three seasons running.)

If you examine this relationship from where it started — between a Naval Intelligence Officer, who would be at sea usually more than 70% of the year, and the SEAL, who was probably in the field more than he was ever out, it’s actually sort of golden. Without guilt or strings or complications toward the lives they return to after the newest dalliance is over. 

This isn’t a personal kind of set up. It’s very economic. It’s very fun. But that’s it.

It’s also a system that has worked for years, without any need to be changed. 

We are never shown a canon moment where Steve is making an active move to pull Cath into his personal life, in any three of the seasons. We are never shown Cath being the person he goes to for comfort or in anger. We are never shown Cath being the person he needs to talk cases through with. We are never shown Cath even being told anything personal about his father, sister or mother, by Steve’s instigation. at any time (aside from when Cath is being asked **for a favor** to track his mother down). 

We have never seen Cath near the Marquis, or anything of his father’s or sister’s. (And, arguably, nothing Doris and Cath get up to together from lying and hiding secrets to having common place social lunches is instigated, supported by, or even known by Steve. Just look at his confused face when he hears about them having lunches in either scene, while they both laugh at his expense, in 3.18. This is a loop he isn’t part of, hadn’t known about until now either.) 

And I think that’s why we don’t see any change or growth between them. The common ground for their relationship in Season Three is exactly the same  **Status Quo** it’s always been in Season One and Season Two. The one that does not require Steve, or either of them, to actually share or grow or change in it. This is why it, absolutely makes sense, that his couch and his truck are completely fine places for them to be hanging out relationship wise, as being too invested in a movie to pay attention to kissing her or reading a book through her talking until sex is involved. For barely apologizing when he shoots down her offers for tickets or plans.

Yes, we get our gesture, but it’s not bigger than any of the earlier ones, nor does it change anything after it. 

In Season One we got our dinner on the beach (that devolves straight to make-outs/sex; before she’s gone again to her ship). In Season Two, we have Steve literally abandoning ship, the scene after Lori is yanked out/fired/forcefully resigned from Five-0 for choosing Five-0 (i.e.; Steve’s way; Steve’s team; Steve) over the Governor, and going to Reserves Drills with Cath (which promptly moves in the scene to making-out; and then we’re told they end up on different ships, and she’s gone again). In Season Three, we get the tux scene only after Cath has loudly complained about the car (but in the episodes after it we return right back to couches and home food and nothing changed). 

**3.** So lets take this one to those compartmentalized boxes I mentioned at the beginning. 

I will never argue that Cath & Steve are two people hold a very deep sort of affections or tenderness for each other, and especially for the history they have with each other, but I have a very hard time seeing it as actual romantic love, given neither of them **canonically** displaying the qualities of being in a relationship with each other for more than favors, hanging, sex and the singular gesture. 

I do believe that Cath loves Steve, but I hedge very hard on whether I believe she is in love with him (especially because 3.08-3.19 has me hedging on whether I believe that she respects him, given her choices, and willing blindness to the situation she was self-perpetuating [Please let me be wrong, rest of Season Three *rolls the dice on it*]). I do believe that Steve loves Cath, or at least holds her in a very high esteem, respect, and affection. 

I definitely don’t see it in Steve that he’s in love with her, when we have the comparison of what his relationship with his canonical best friend is. His romantic relationship should be more than that, even, then. But what we get is so much less than it. There is no emotional involvement displayed. Instead we get a massive heaping addition of casual physical affection, acknowledgements of sexual attraction and blatant sex (in Season One/Two) or pg references, but no canon head tilts, toward a sexual relationship (in Season Three). 

And in a lot of ways, I think it’s because as compartmentalized as Steve keeps himself, those boxes are already filled. By Danny. And have been for these three years, in a way Steve maybe has never had someone (friend or lover) to share his life with, and all it’s crazy, batshit dramatic personal swings.  

He continually goes out of his way in canon to share the person he is that’s changing (both by choice, rarely, and by forced situation, more often) with Danny. Where it relates to his self, his family, his past and his job. Those things are shared with Danny, because that what’s their relationship — and what Danny in his life — has been about. 

Both of these relationships perpetuate themselves in the way they always have been in this season. There’s an impetus to share and grow more in **only** one of them, because it was formed and funneled that way, and less of one in the other, because that’s the way that one has **always** been, too.

Which in my opinion says a whole lot about where Steve keeps what in his life, with who and for what. 


End file.
